Post by cjm on Dec 13, 2017 18:10:52 GMT

I posted this on a Breitbart item: I only got one fairly nondescript reply. Sadly, I suspect most of the Breitbart posters aren't too bright. I also suspect a communication gap - I think my comments don't translate too well into Americanese, and are often misunderstood.

But anyway, I think it is very feasible that Bannon's efforts could result in the Senate resorting back to the Democrats, (I'm very sure that Bannon himself is totally aware of the fact) and I'm trying to work out how that is going to help Bannon.

Maybe in 2 ways:1. Perhaps Trump is going to push a lot of his stuff very quickly, very early next year. Due to Bannon's efforts, the GOP senators are going to think very carefully and very deeply about how they are going to respond to that. They can be assured that if they cross Trump, it will echo all over the US.

2. I think that maybe Bannon is willing to hand over the Senate to the Democrats. America is in a mess, and in truth, during a mess it is much better to NOT be in charge. Whatever the Democrats do is guaranteed to piss the voters off even more, which is going add huge impetus to the Bannon movement. I also suspect that Bannon will not be averse to Trump being impeached, and not making it to the next presidential election. I think he has Trump's successor already lined up - Ted Cruz. (Although as a South African I can't imagine why - when I look at the man, I can't escape the feeling that actually he should be in jail).

This is hardly unexpected. I reckon it's not a surprise for Bannon either. So again, what does he get out of it? Maybe he just went for the big win, having decided that losing isn't bad either - he effectively obliterated what must've been a forgone conclusion for the Republicans.

I must say, I thought Moore was in with a chance. Bannon poured a lot of energy into the campaign as well. I cannot think that he would have done so if he did not believe in Moore's chances. The allegations must have hurt Moore more than it was thought by his campaign managers. Drudge opines that Luther Strange would have won by a large margin. What seems clear is that Jones was not supported by Republicans. They just did not vote at all. It is said that of the Republican voter base, 50 % cast a vote. On the Democrat side, it was over 90 %

The fact that I am considered an adult is both terrifying and hillarious

Post by Trog on Dec 22, 2017 8:32:57 GMT

The headline is actually click-bait. I very much doubt that Bannon wants to be president. He wants to be the person who tells the president what to do. I reckon he thinks of the POTUS in much the same way I think of the POTUS - as a face, a talking head.

A prominent Republican described Bannon’s crusade as a vanity exercise doomed to fail. “I think there was a lot of rage when he was in the White House,” the Republican said. “Steve had to subsume his ego to Donald, who Steve thinks is dumb and crazy.

On the afternoon of Friday, January 27, the White House announced a travel ban barring immigrants from eight Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, including all Syrian refugees. It sparked protests at airports nationwide. Bannon explained this was by design. “Why did we drop the travel ban on a Friday evening? Because the resistance is our friend,” he told me. “Our thing is to throw gasoline on the resistance. I love it. When they”—the Democrats—“talk about identity politics, they’re playing into our hands. Because you can’t win [elections] on that.”

Bannon believed the Russia collusion case was meritless, but he blamed Kushner for taking meetings during the campaign that gave the appearance the Trump team sought Putin’s help. “He’s taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared,” Bannon told me. “They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That’s his maturity level.”

The blowback pitched the West Wing into another crisis. On Wednesday, Bannon was meeting with chief of staff Priebus in Priebus’s office when Kushner walked in.

“We have a communications problem,” Kushner said.

“No we don’t,” Bannon shot back. “We have a decision-making problem. We make a lot of bad decisions, and the bad decisions have to do with you.”

“It got uglier from there,” Bannon later recalled.

The relationship between Kushner and Bannon worsened through the spring. At one point, Bannon said, Trump called an Oval Office meeting to broker peace. Attending were Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. She blamed Bannon for the leaks.

“She’s the queen of leaks,” Bannon argued back.

“You’re a xxxxing liar!” Ivanka said.

Trump tried to adjudicate, but the meeting did little to diffuse tensions.

Bannon’s own transformation from political adviser to a quasi-politician has also transformed Breitbart; it’s become a site that promotes his campaign. On the day of Bannon’s Tokyo speech, his name appeared in seven different headlines on the homepage. In December, Bannon signed a deal to host Breitbart’s daily satellite radio show. His message, however, isn’t quarantined inside the right-wing media bubble. That’s because Bannon has a canny ability to cultivate mainstream journalists.

Once we’re airborne I asked Bannon how the presidency had changed Trump. “He’s much more moderate,” Bannon said, sipping a Fiji water. “He’s an accommodationist. Trump’s tendency is to always get Maggie Haberman in there. He reads The New York Times. To him that’s the paper of record.” For a presidency defined by Twitter, Bannon said Trump has a limited grasp of new media. “He doesn’t go online. That’s a huge thing. I mean Orrin Hatch”—who’s 83—“goes online! Trump reads printouts.”

Two days after Moore’s defeat, I met Bannon for breakfast in New York before he headed back to Tokyo to give another anti-China speech. A bearded bodyguard sat nearby with a pistol tucked into his waistband. Despite the setback, Bannon was in high spirits. “Dude you don’t know the firestorm that’s coming,” he said, picking over a crumb muffin and sipping coffee. “The civil war will go to an even higher, more intense level.” Bannon said McConnell, in his machinations against Moore, revealed that G.O.P. elites are aligned with Democrats against the deplorables. “The G.O.P. establishment would rather have control and give up seats to the radical progressive left.”

This aligns with what I also think: It may not have been the initial strategy, but Bannon will rather take Moore's loss than to have had the establishment GOP take the election, and he will do it again and again.

And Trump, having flirted with the establishment, has come home. Since Charlottesville, Trump has governed almost exclusively for Bannon’s base. For all the tsuris Bannon causes the president, the two need each other. “He momentarily has lapses when he’s convinced by people around him in the White House to do ridiculous things like support Big Luther Strange, another genius move by Jared,” Bannon said. “But look at how many things he approved right after Alabama to get us back on board. I think the establishment has to understand something. Their day of running the Republican Party is over.”

During one conversation this fall, Bannon seemed to accept that his campaign might not succeed. But he said people are mistaken if they equate losing elections with failure. “I’m not a political operative,” he said, “I’m a revolutionary.”

Post by Trog on Feb 14, 2018 12:10:53 GMT

Bannon is obviously working harder than ever. And his association with Breitbart obviously continues undiminished. I never believed any of the recent mainstream reporting about him. Like Mercer, I think, he is working deliberately to shrink his public profile.

What is he working at, I wonder? Probably at manufacturing the next president.

Post by cjm on Feb 15, 2018 7:05:48 GMT

Bannon is obviously working harder than ever. And his association with Breitbart obviously continues undiminished. I never believed any of the recent mainstream reporting about him. Like Mercer, I think, he is working deliberately to shrink his public profile.

What is he working at, I wonder? Probably at manufacturing the next president.

Bannon almost seems normal according to this article - Trump does not. A few points about Lewis's Trump picture: One does not build a business empire on luck. Trump has lost a lot of money as a result of his Presidency. What people fail to notice is his desire to be a good President. Call it vanity or whatever, but that is what he is pursuing. Questioning his commitment to ethics is far fetched if one compares him with Hillary (for example). I have a lot of reservations about the supposed tryst with Stormy. That he would have wanted to bury any allegations I can understand, but is it the truth? In any event, his lawyer paid her off -'K one can question that, but Trump wandering about in his pajamas talking about his fear of donating to sharks - please! The emphasis on the remarks about a weaker $ is typical Trump bashing. A weaker $ would be in the US's interest. Saying so, does not mean there is an underhanded attempt to do it. In fact, the policy of making the US great would undermine any attempt to weaken it. And so one can continue. A little inuendo here, a little falsehood there - all under a pretense of objectivity.

Using your type of thinking about Bannon, I would suggest that his "firing" was a convenient (consensual) means of getting him into positions where he could facilitate Trump's agenda and gather info. It would also make it easier to speak to people like Lewis and attempt to influence them. At the same time it would take the heat off Trump by people gunning for Bannon.

It is worth noting that Trump and the GOP has since made a comeback in the polls.

The fact that I am considered an adult is both terrifying and hillarious

Post by Trog on May 28, 2018 13:55:05 GMT

Bannon shuffles to his feet. A figure who constantly strives to appear newly woken, unkempt, as if disturbed from hibernation. He takes the mike and stands, now towering over his fellow speaker and their moderator. He makes no joke. Makes no concession towards a friendlier kind of politics. He doesn’t do “halfway”. He pauses, looks out to the audience and says: “On the 15th of September, 2008, the world changed for ever.”

And as he utters those words, my mouth hits my stomach.

Bannon, with the extra-sensory perception of an animal fleeing an imminent tsunami, has proved himself to feel the wave of a movement ahead of time. Ramifications of the financial crash ten years ago showed him early that Trump could win. That wave has now brought him to Europe.

And to see what he saw long ago you only have to glance up at the creeping authoritarianism in Hungary and Poland — the Czech Republic, where we now sit, squeezed between them; or look at Italy’s newest ruling parties, Russophile and Eurosceptic; or at the rising superstar power of the youngest Le Pen, savvy enough to drop “Le Pen” from her brand.

You don’t have to like what Steve Bannon says. You don’t even need to believe it. But this is a man who has been pivotal to the biggest shake-up in American political history. How stupid would it be to ignore what he’s going to say next?

The comments are interesting. W.r.t. Bannon, the comments are always interesting.

Post by cjm on Sept 8, 2018 8:59:21 GMT

Bannon looks much better than after the Trump campaign. He radiates energy and power.

I cannot think of anything I disagree with except perhaps the attack on elites. I think society needs them as well - perhaps in a less dominant position, but going after them too much also has implications for freedom. I fully agree about the dangers China poses: no one has ever had the courage to check them.

The fact that I am considered an adult is both terrifying and hillarious

Post by Trog on Sept 9, 2018 8:59:37 GMT

I cannot think of anything I disagree with except perhaps the attack on elites. I think society needs them as well - perhaps in a less dominant position, but going after them too much also has implications for freedom.

I sure Bannon is not at all opposed to hierarchical structures - he is, after all, cast as someone on the right of the political spectrum, where hierarchies are considered to be inevitable, desirable and the natural consequence of the mere act of existence. (Which is, as far as I can perceive, one of the few meaningful difference between the right and the left.) If Bannon was anti-hierarchy he would be on the left, rather than on the right.

So I don't think that Bannon considers 'the elites' as an entity that fits into a hierarchical structure at all - 'elite' does not refer to them as sitting on top of a hierarchical order. It's just a name to signify that closed ecosystem that developed around the body of professional politicians, large corporate business enterprises and the mainstream media, and the concomitant crony capitalism, which transcends party and even national boundaries and excludes everybody not part of it from politics.